Will trademark concerns be addressed?

[irelativism]

Now that most of the foundation work seams to be completed, and that the project is a bit more independent from Mozilla, will the trademark concerns, be addressed.

Shouldnt trademark policy (and related references to Mozilla Media-guide) be rebased? Because while Rust copyright license allows distribution of derivative works, trademark policy might restrict this very own concession. Propousal:

• Removing obnoxious clauses stating "need for explicit permission, except non commercial-use" on policy itself in what is related with media-guide. This would resolve derived restrictions from such a demanding policy. Given, in theory, even if somebody wants to makes minor changes, they would need to rebrand the entire compiler and build tools, so in practice nobody does (and just infringe above policy for practicallity).
• Addressing the previous, in order to allow people to fork and by consequence contributing back, without the fear of infriging this overreaching policy. In other words this would also allow to study and redistibution of derivative works (not that people dont already, by infringement anyway) but so people have the ability to improve the source code and contribute/release improvements for the Rst codebase (which obviously still contain all references to Rst and abranged by its current trademark policy), without the need for users to rebrand their modified versions, allowing patching without "explicit approval” and withdrawing any fear of policy violation or infrigment. Therefore the community has doubts if Rst compiler and Cargo can be considered FOSS or not because it's ND by rebranding impracticability (except for non-commercial usage) so that is why is strictly urgent to remove such malevolent limitations.
• Finalize all the details around the foundation and language independence and by consequence create a brand new policy, while still being able to efectively protect, and prevent copycats, or even malicius forks, that intend to republish sources with injected malware or any sort of related atacks to our project, but still respecting contributor freedom has explained above. A good sugestion would be for the team to look into similar policy, to what is propoused here. Implementation that adopt this kind of positions are for example what Perl and/or Python foundations have in place. Many believe such projects managed to reached a good balance between both objectives, on this very dificult balance.

partialSOLUTION: all branding should be defined in one file or folder making it easy for somebody who wants to distribute modified copies to rebrand. Firefox has the same trademark policy as Rust (Mozilla Media-guide), but they at least make it relatively easy to rebrand the browser: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/branding/unofficial

Thanks nonetheless for the feedback, all your previous contributions for this project. And goodluck with finalizing all the foundation work. :)
P.S.Sorry for any misspellings here, but english is not my native language. Will hopefull hear back from you in the future, Cheers. (based on • irelativism comment Dec 7, 2020 •)

Some older issues might also prove helpfull:

• Trademark restrictions? #53287
• Rebranding Rust compiler is extremely unpractical -- can't easily exercise freedom 3 #77234
• the foundation owns rust trademarks #85504
• Sponsorship & trademark policy needs updating to reflect Rust Foundation #85291
• Will trademark concerns be addressed? foundation-faq-2020#35
• relatedPR^ Update FAQ, adding question related to trademark.md foundation-faq-2020#33

Also this issue was discussed, in the past a few times, but originaly rejected in #53287#issuecomment-414472372 by mozilla team, now with independance the project might have a diferent view on it. Especially given recently show of position, that seams to provide a bit more openess and willingness to find a solution for this topic -> relevant answer:
"
The foundation will be reviewing the trademark policy, but it will ultimately be up to the board to decide the terms that are selected.
"

[irelativism]

Given the other issue, because it was on the foundation FAQ repository, was locked and not transfered. Im addressing it now, by reopenning it here, so people can comment and express their own concerns and views on this important topic, people previously involved were: @g4jc @agnxy @liigo @Mark-Simulacrum @cbeuw @ErikPrantare @Demindiro @worldpe @clehner @mimi89999 @est31 @mssx86 @FrostKnight @malte-v @yuijri8 @AltF02 @Semisol and lastly @jonas-schievink .
thanks for compreension. Cheers Irelativism

[FrostKnight]

Its really not practical to rebrand rust due to how many references to rust logo, etc...

So yeah, I am heavily against Rust, until they change this annoying problem...

To be honest, it makes me wonder if the programming language is even free, as well as if those who have added it and done what they want with it, are not opening themselves up for being sued, etc...

Besides, some people may want to remove certain things that Rust uses by default, or disable it, etc...

Aka, some people don't like how big and heavy the rust programming lanugage is...

But its not clear what will happen if they do.

I would therefore appreciate it, if the Rust team would please get rid of that unneeded trademark clause, as far as distributing modified versions.

At the very least, can the Rust Team at least make it, as easy as rebranding the firefox browser?

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/branding/unofficial

Such as the above link that the OP made?

Besides, this really doesn't do anything useful, if people want to infringe, do you think they will respect anything?

Not even close, one extra trademark restriction is not going to help one bit.

It's just annoying. So, I ask please fix this issue.

[clehner]

I hope that the Rust Foundation and Board will revise the trademark policy to address the concerns in favor of allowing use of Rust and Cargo as free/libre/open-source software (FLOSS).

Here is a summary of the situation: https://bonebaboon.tilde.site/rust-trademark-policy-issue/#Rust-Foundation-Desirable-Actions (via https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Talk:Rust)

Currently the Rust and Cargo are not made available subject only to the conditions of the applicable open source licenses. Instead the Rust Foundation trademark policy adds additional restrictions that require either:

• Getting permission from the Rust Foundation to distribute copies and modified versions of Rust and Cargo
• Rebranding Rust and Cargo

The Python trademark policy and the Perl trademark policy are examples of trademark policies that the Rust Foundation could model it’s revised trademark policy on.

[programmerjake]

ping

[irelativism]

@programmerjake pong?

[gottaeat]

@irelativism i literally clicked a button to react to that one post ages ago lmao, couldn't care less

[FrostKnight]

I hope they aren't doing nothing, because they intend to sue people/organizations that modify it after getting permission because they dislike said projects and want them to fail...

This, I say because, trademarks do not prevent people from abusing their power to do evil stuff that the owners forbid.

One might say, that copyright only hurts those who want to do things by the law and not those that they want to prevent from abusing their trademark.

I know I think that about copyright as a whole. Seems like a ponzi scheme, in general...

Regarding the most restrictive copyrights and trademarks as a whole.

I would love to be wrong about this organization however.

I very much hope they will prove me wrong, by removing these useless trademark restrictions that really don't do jackshit... well except as I said above, hurt those who mean no harm.

[est31]

There have been some recent developments, including a survey on what people want from the trademark policy. The survey is open until September 2022.

Debian bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1013920

LWN article about it: https://lwn.net/Articles/901816/

Rust foundation survey on trademark policy: https://foundation.rust-lang.org/news/2022-08-09-trademark-policy-review-and-survey/

[irelativism]

@est31 thank you very much for sharing this, this surrvey shows intent which is allways good

[JacobKfromIRC]

That survey seems to require nonfree software to fill out? I was able to complete the survey using a script that I wrote, but I'm not sure if it actually submitted properly. I saw my text responses in the request but the formatting is unlike what I've seen before, so I'm not sure what the multiple choice answers are supposed to look like.

This is the script I wrote:

document.querySelector("div.ss-page").style.display = "revert";

document.getElementById("cmdGo").addEventListener("click", function(){
	document.getElementById("frmSurvey").submit();
});

[programmerjake]

is there any new news on this, iirc there was a survey in 2022 on what to do about the trademark, but i can't find any mention of what the survey results are and what exact changes the rust foundation is making.

[FrostKnight]

Wondering when this will get fixed...

A language empowering everyone
to build reliable and efficient software.

Yet the libraries it requires show that even if it would deliver on the memory safe aspect, even if people make a programming language like rust and you avoid pitfalls of other programming languages, if people cannot excercise freedom to modify it as they see fit, then that alone is a problem, let alone the fact that the code base takes forever to compile and is a massively huge codebase.
Also rust's logo was scattered in so many places, in the language, like, if it was limited to less than 5, sure, but not this.
If you need their permission to modify it, than its non-free, full stop.

Also, it feels like they want to make another blue whale programming language.
Isn't java and javascript alone bad enough? Those are awful as it is.

They are not just freedom issues, they are privacy and security hell.

Do we need a third situation like that?

My point being, quite a few devs have presumed as if its a fully freely licensed programming language, its not though.

I am willing to change my mind, if they make sensible changes that allow it to be shrunk to reasonable levels. Otherwise, I very much will boycott it as much as possible.

If people need really modern technology to build anything like rust, than that is wrong. That is actively hurting the planet too btw.

If they don't care what I just said, regarding the programming language being trademark ridden in issues, fine... but if people think its okay to make more tech obsolete for no reason, meaning the hurting the planet part, then I have little respect for them if any.

[clehner]

I'm not aware if there are any policy updates lately. However, FSF's Free Software Directory re-approved Rust's listing: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/directory-discuss/2022-09/msg00000.html https://directory.fsf.org/wiki?title=Rust&diff=87657&oldid=87651